Summary:

The Merchandise Planning and Inventory Manager is directly responsible for all merchandise planning and allocation responsibilities for Lacoste’s First Choice (1st Choice) Channels, including Boutiques, E-Commerce, Wholesale, and Macy’s Concessions in the US. The main responsibility is to lead and manage end-to-end omni channel merchandise planning and inventory and oversee the replenishment/allocation processes. They will work closely with the buyers, retail operations, finance, and channel business leads to maximize stock efficiencies by crafting the total supply needs for the business. They also need to implement a strategic promotional cadence that balance top-line sales goals with net margin goals, whilst ensuring a healthy turnover of stock.

 

Essential Job Responsibilities:

Manage team of 4 direct reports including a Merchandise Planner, a Sr. Allocator, and two Allocators, responsible for merch plans, line plans, allocations, and promotional strategy for Lacoste’s retail, e-commerce, and wholesale businesses as well as all special project allocations including collaborations, events and Miami Open

Own creation of channel-specific merch plans for the buying team before a season begins, utilizing historical demand to forecast out units needed to hit business strategic and sales goals

Heavy involvement in financial processes including budgeting and forecasting processes, accurately projecting discount rates, net margin, net unit price, sales mixes for each 1C channel of business

Responsible for providing the outbound inventory forecast, quarterly review of the active/non-active SKU list, and other inventory-related analysis to the Operations, Finance, and Order Fulfillment teams

Design, produce, and enhance reporting, dashboards, and tools for cross-functional team, identifying opportunities for standardization and automation of processes and leveraging best practices from cross-functional and global teams

Create and maintain reporting including, but not limited to: sales to stock, allocation recaps, daily promo recap, store capacity report, in-bound tracker, high turn styles, core replenishment, MOH etc.

Create promotional plan and analyze promotional performance, hosting weekly margin review meetings with leadership and business partners to review recommended adjustments, strategies, and hurdles

Monitor stock levels, sales performance, historical data, market leader feedback and emerging trends to drive allocation plans at weekly level leading up to a rolling forecast

Maximize and identify inventory opportunities through transfers within channels and across regions, including 3^rd party sell offs and sample sales

Partner closely with Logistics/Operations and Order Fulfillment to streamline the allocation function to maximize efficiency and profitability

Core Competencies

Initiative: Actively strives to achieve goals beyond the minimum level of performance. A self-starter who has the ability to work well without close supervision and in a fast-paced environment.

Mathematical: Must be proficient working with numbers to ensure correctness of date produced when compiling large volumes of data on a spreadsheet for analysis.

Analytical: Must be able to identify and react to business trends in various markets.

Organized: Must be able to develop a system that will enable you to gather and retrieve information quickly.

Communication: Able to communicate clearly and productively with various business partners to foster open communication and to establish good working relationships within the business. 

Experienced people leader who’s able to manage

Requirements/Qualifications:

Minimum of 5-7 years’ experience in a quantitative field, preferably within the fashion retail industry

Has demonstrated leadership experience in prior roles

Strong cross-functional partnership skills, highly detail-oriented and organized

Excellent Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint expertise: must be able to analyze large volumes of data in excel and be able to distill analysis into digestible presentations

Four year college degree in a quantitative field preferred  (finance, business, economics, mathematics, or similar)